


Folks Vignettes (Billy, John, Rebecca)

by Piper



Series: Folks One Shots [4]
Category: American Civil War RPF, American Folklore, Original Work
Genre: American Civil War, American History, Black Male Character, F/M, Female Character of Color, Gen, One Shot, Original Character(s), Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, POV Male Character, POV Original Character, first drafts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 07:39:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2101170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piper/pseuds/Piper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rebecca Parris finds out about the horseman. (This is sort of floating timeline wise... sometime during or after the second episode)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Folks Vignettes (Billy, John, Rebecca)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slipsthrufingers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slipsthrufingers/gifts), [yabamena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yabamena/gifts).



> It's 2am, so this may be rife with typos.

John Henry wasn't much for hyperbole. 

Will Chapman looked about five inches from death.

Rebecca Parris was late and sounded madder than a Jersey Devil through a shoddy cell phone signal. 

“I knew you should'a told her.”

With a bit of colour in his cheeks Will might have managed a threatening version of the halfhearted glare he shot in John's direction. As it was John simply shrugged it off. There was nothing threatening about a boy who looked like he was about to meet the skewering end of a second hand rifle.

(And it wasn't as if John didn't know what that face looked like on his friend. Running liquor during Prohibition hadn't been an easy job for anyone, not even the boys who couldn't die. Even knowing that their 'deaths' weren't long for this word, John had done all he could to keep Will's bits and parts from spilling out onto that rough Pensatucky back road after he'd been shot. John Henry wasn't much for hyperbole and he knew the look of man who knew he was about to meet his end.)

John cleared his throat before repeating,“You should'a told her.”

“I should'a done a lot of things,” Will muttered. “It doesn't matter now.”

Will should have ended his relationship with the Parrises of Salem, Massachusetts a good century and a quarter ago, but John snapped his mouth shut before any of that could be said. His lips pursed instead. 

“You got something else to say?” Will snapped.

“Plenty,” John said. “But I ain't sure you're up to listening.”

They'd been friends since the day Will had patiently explained that John had hammered himself into myth and lore, and that meant he was to live forever. Theirs was a relationship begun on a basis of sheer disbelief followed eventually by trust and mutual reliance. There wasn't much one could say or do to the other that wouldn't eventually be water under a hundred year high bridge. 

Will would forgive John's barbs. John would forgive Will dragging him out to a truck rest stop in the middle of nowhere when they both knew there was perfectly good coffee and pie back in Kith Harbour at the Appleseed. 

(At some point in the past 50 years John had become accustomed to a few perks of modern living. He wasn't proud, but there was certainly something amusingly peculiar about a former slave getting into particulars over the roast of his fair trade coffee beans.

He really wasn't proud.)

Will looked up. “I should have told her.”

John just nodded. “I might'a mentioned that once or twice, yeah.”

“She's going to kill me.”

“I don't know her half as well as you do,” John said. “But from what you've told me I reckon it's a distinct possibility.”

“Shit.”

“Buck up.”

The door to the truck stop opened and Will clutched his tepid mug of coffee as if it was going to protect him from the Parris wrath.

(It wasn't.)

Rebecca Parris didn't look like anyone's mother, but Will had warned him about first impressions on the drive over. “You won't realise how serious she is about Josie until she's yelling at you about her,” he'd said, to which John had simply responded, “Why would I think she wasn't? She's her mother.” 

John could see now that Rebecca and Josie looked alike enough, but he never would have guessed the woman was her mother. An older sister, or maybe that favoured auntie every little girl seemed to have. She was only forty-two and didn't look it just yet; he would have assumed younger with her smooth brown face and lithe body. He might have even knocked another few years off had she been smiling, but it didn't take much to guess that Josie was faster with a grin or smirk than her mother. Rebecca's braided hair was pulled back tightly into a low, utilitarian pony tail that fell down against the short leather jacket on her back and only added to her air of severity. She didn't smile in greeting from across the room, nor did she offer any other sign that she was pleased to see either of them as she approached.

John was not entirely unsympathetic. “When all's said and done, you saved her girl's life,” he said.

“You saved her life,” Will answered. “I put her in the position to need saving.”

“I like you living and don't fancy going back South to collect you,” John said, standing as Rebecca walked towards them. “Means we ain't got to get into particulars.”

Will just barely smiled before following John to his feet. 

The small act of chivalry only made it easier for Rebecca to immediately get in Will's face. It wasn't until they were nose to nose that John realised that the stood at perfectly equal height. Given the chance Will might have outpaced her eventually, but the eternally seventeen didn't do much growing. 

And so they stood eye to eye, and finger to chest. “You should have told me!” 

(John wasn't one for 'told you sos' either, but. Well.)

“No one could get in touch with you.”

“Arthur got in touch with me.”

“How did Arthur know--”

“How did my husband not manage to get outsmarted by two teenagers?” Rebecca rolled her eyes and pressed her fingers into Will's chest one more time. “You think we don't know the comings and goings of our own house? You're as bad as she is.”

There was no arguing with that and the red blossoming through Will's pale cheeks proved it. The younger boy averted his eyes towards the grimy diner floor. “I'm sorry, Becca. I am. But Jo is fine, I swear it.”

John nodded in agreement. Rebecca's eyes were on him in an instant, her tongue still behind lips pursed into the thinnest of lines. She looked him up and down before pulling back and neatly sliding herself into one side their booth. She was five foot eight and couldn't have, by John's reckoning, been anymore than a hundred and forty pounds. She didn't –couldn't-- fill the booth seat alone and yet when she hissed out, “Sit. Down.” it was very clear that there was space for neither of them anywhere next to her.

Will scrambled into the seat across the table. John sat and looked between the both of them.

Rebecca didn't waste any time. “What happened? Exactly.” 

“There's a Headless Horseman killing people in Kith Harbour,” Will said. “Jo saw-- heard something the thing in the woods before it killed a friend of hers. S'the only reason she's involved. You know she's got those trails memorised like it's her own homestead, and--”

“We're going to deal with you and Josie,” she said, cutting him off. “'We' being you, me, my daughter and your uncle. Later. Right now I want to know why there's a horseman running around outside Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown. Kith Harbour's not an Irving town. We've never had so much as a bowling alley or a sleeping spell, much less a horseman.”

“It's a popular story.”

“It is, but Kith Harbour's not it's place of power. It shouldn't be running around. Certainly shouldn't be killing people.” Rebecca looked from Will to John. “And while we're on the subject of people being where they're not supposed to be, what the hell are you doing outside the Virginias?”

“Had an urge to travel.” And he had. He'd not gotten to see much of the North in his mortal days, and hadn't been able to get much past the Pennsylvania side of the Rust Belt during his time as a Folk. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth John hadn't questioned his sudden ability to slip on up into New York. 

Rebecca did not look impressed with his wanderlust. She nodded at Will. “Continue.”

“Jo told me about what she thought she heard in the woods, but she wouldn't tell me where unless I let her come along with John and me. So we all three went in and... well we do know there's a Horseman in there somewhere. But...” Will trailed off, making a face that indicated just how much he did not want to continue this particular part of the story in her presence. “We didn't find the Horseman. Did kill us a Bunnyman, though. Found that.”

(Or, rather, it found them, but not was not the time for qualifications or particulars, as John had already pointed out.)

“Did you bring that thing up from Virginia with you on purpose?” The older woman turned on John again, giving him the full weight of her stare. 

“No, Ma'am.”

“We couldn't have killed it without John,” Will said. 

“You should not be killing anything because this is not your job.”

“Well it's dead and you weren't there to do it.”

“Maybe I'd have been back here faster if any one of the two of you had thought to send me a message that included the words 'I think we found a horseman'.” Rebecca shook her head. “I almost, just barely, expect this from Jo. You should know better.”

“I know what I'm doing.”

“You were tracking a horseman and came up with a Bunnyman. That's a wide berth to miss by.”

His friend sounded so much more like himself speaking to this woman he'd known nearly since she'd been born. He could hear the Carolina in Will's voice, nowhere near as strong as his brother's, but certainly more than he'd ever let Josie hear. There was the boy born from canon fire and smoke at Fort Sumpter who'd spent a war forced into a false adulthood and never had quite figured out how to be a teenager after that. Will had been a soldier, but as the literal embodiment of the army he fought for John had a strong inkling that he'd never really had to follow an order that didn't suit his mood. John couldn't imagine that Will had ever had to listen to anyone read him the riot act like Rebecca Parris. 

The look on his face confirmed that much. The boy had won a war and and an entire country to boot. He was hard on himself, stubborn, and took blame where he shouldn't, but he wasn't used to letting other people down. 

Which, as far as John was concerned, he hadn't. Not this time. “Either way, which ever we came across, it needed killing. Will got that done.”

“With my daughter in tow.” 

“Said yourself that's a discussion for another day,” John said. “Ma'am.”

He had Rebecca's unwavering dark brown eyes on him after that. _She'd send me to bed without supper and ground me if she could._ John fought to keep the smirk off his face at the thought, instead holding her stare as long as she offered it. She never did look away, but she did take a breath after a moment. It seemed to help. Slightly.

“I did. You're right,” she said finally. “But that doesn't change the fact that you should have told me as soon as you even thought there was a Horseman in Kith Harbour. I--” she hesitated. “I appreciate what you're trying to do, but it is my job. You've got to tell me what's going on in my own town where my own family lives and I'll be back. You know I will. For Josephine.” 

Will nodded slowly. “I know, but...” he looked up. “ I know. I should've told you.”

(John was, by now, tired of being right.)

“You should've,” she agreed. “Bunnyman's dead?”

“Yeah.”

“And you lost the horseman.”

“We never found him.”

“The fact remains it's there. And it shouldn't be.” Rebecca tapped her fingers against the laminated table. She made a face before saying, “I'll have to go to Salem.”

“For what?”

John didn't need to wait for the answer. “Because if anyone knows why I'm suddenly free to move about as I please it'd be the Folks of Salem. Think on it.”

He watched as Will did and realisation dawned across his face. Didn't take long to figure why the Folk matriarch of Rebecca's family might know something about the changing laws of folklore and the supernatural that the rest of them had yet to quite grasp. John wasn't long out of Virginia, but he was more than familiar with the stories about the witch known as Tituba.

“I'll let Arthur and Jo know I'm going,” Rebecca continued. “If Jo asks I'm telling her John Chapman filled me in after Arthur told me about the two of you sneaking back in the other night, and I'll expect you to stick to that.”

“I know,” Will said. “I will.”

“I mean it. She wants in on this life and she sneaks in where she can, clearly, but as far as she knows--”

“As far as she knows I'm Will Chapman, John's kin from South Carolina, living with him while his parents work out their marriage.” The lines were as good as automated, recited like a script he'd read from hundreds of times. “As far as she knows I'm just another Descendent like she is. I know it all, Becca, and I agree. It's better like this.”

She nodded. “It is.”

“Jo's gonna be fine.”

“I know she is because I do trust you, Billy, near as much as I trust her, and I trust that you're not going to let my daughter try and kill a horseman, because I trust you know that you plus a friend do not count as 'backup',” Rebecca said, glancing back over at John. “I don't care what kind of hammer you're swinging.”

John allowed a small grin. “I'm just passing through anyways.”

“Mmhmm, best do that while you can,” Rebecca cocked a brow. “As I'll be back from Salem soon. With answers.”

“Yes, Ma'am.”

(John wanted to see the country that kept him living, he did. He had ambitions, like he'd told Josephine. Plans of going to school and dreams of some sort of resulting degree. Something in engineering, he thought. He was still, at heart, a railroad man. He had plans and ambitions and the loosening bonds on his kind made now as good a time to strike out on those desires as it ever had been. 

But John had grown up as someone else's property, died a free hero, and awoke to an entirely different sort of bondage. John was a pragmatist and he was willing to allow that freedom did not last forever. His never had.)

“John's good people. One of my best friends,” Will said quickly. “You've my word on that one.”

“It's fine-- I take her meaning and there's no offense to it.”

“And there was none meant. It's just the balance of things, that's all.” John nodded in agreement as she spoke and Will seemed to relax. Rebecca eyed them both and placed both her hands flat atop the table. “Is there anything else I should know before I head upstate?”

Will shook his head. “No. There're gonna be more bodies though, with a horseman loose.”

“You're not wrong,” she said. “But it's a horseman with range. Bad as it is, it's not tied down to one place so it's not just going to massacre one down. What happened in Kith Harbour is horrible, but... it's been two bodies? It'll move on fast on that horse. The town's likely safe now. Josie and Arthur, and you are safe, so long as you don't go looking for trouble. I'll get the thing, but I'd rather corner it back down in Sleepy Hollow where it belongs after I figure out what's going on.”

Rebecca spoke of balance on the one hand, and kept her family's welfare clutched tightly in the other. John suspected that when push came to shove there was only one that would wise to the top, even if she wouldn't admit to it. There was a cold logic to her words and a clear willingness to sacrifice the world outside the small town of Kith Harbour. 

“And if it does come back?” Billy asked.

“Pick up the phone this time. Simple. ” Rebecca said easily. Her hands still rested flat against the surface and she used them now to push herself up. She was standing again, this time looking far less like she was ready to kill Will then and there .

“And you'll come back.”

She met his eyes and gave one, slight nod. “Billy, I'll come back.” 

And somehow, in that moment, John knew that there was a whole length of story between this woman and his best friend that he was missing. A story that went beyond teen crushes, nervous kisses, and the whimsy of young love. He also knew that this was the wrong time to ask for that story. He struggled to foresee a time in a immediate future that would come even close to being an appropriate time.

They'd shelve that conversation for another, horseman-less, day. 

The moment passed as quickly as it arrived, Rebecca not being one for public sentiment. Perhaps any sentiment, as far as John knew. She was still standing in front of them, but the no-nonsense demeanour she'd arrived with had slipped right back into place. “I'll call your uncle from the road, get the story arranged. Then Arthur, then Jo. Nothing from either of you until then,” she repeated. “And be safe.”

She turned then, reaching down to zip her leather jacket as she walked back out of the roadside dive. The door closed behind her, and John watched Will watch Rebecca walk back down through the parking lot until she made her way around the building and out of sight. She was gone, headed a few hundred miles north towards Massachusetts, but Will... Will was clearly going to need a moment.

(He still wouldn't ask. He _wanted_ to ask, but he wouldn't.)

“Alright, let's get back.”

John gave Will a hard look once he spoke. “You good to drive?”

“Yeah.” The War and his blues and grays were already slipping from his tongue. “Yeah, I'm good. Let's go.”

“Good.” John stood up. “This place is disgusting.”

(Will didn't talk much as he drove them home, but he was eternally seventeen and couldn't help that he was broadcasting his angst and his hormones all over the pickup's cab. And even if he hadn't been practically thinking louder than his muffler-less engine, his perpetually wrinkled forehead, lip chewing, and frustrated sighs would have given away plenty. John politely attempted not to drown in teenage ennui while also very pointedly _not asking_.

Once again, John Henry wasn't much for hyperbole. But from Tituba to the minister's daughter, the Parrises were a witching family. As far as John was concerned Hester Parris had hit that boy with the wrong end of a love spell nursing him back to health in 1863 and maybe he should've just lost that leg instead. John liked Josephine and her mother seemed reasonable, but there was no other explanation and no family of women worth over a century's worth of heartache and rejection. 

There was no exaggeration there, as far as he was concerned. Just good, plain common sense.)


End file.
